Deborah Jeane Palfrey owned an escort service for which women got paid to have sex with men. She had been a prostitute herself. Montgomery Blair Sibley, our guest today, was her defense lawyer and friend. For those reasons alone, and by inviting him into the studio to tell her story, we could be accused of glorifying the act of prostitution. What’s more, Sibley is an unconventional attorney by pretty much any standard. He’s from a well-heeled family in the DC Metropolitan area (his mother was the founder of NARAL and he has other familial links to George Mason and President Abraham Lincoln), but he’s known in the courtroom as a loose cannon and has been disbarred in at least one state.

But the evidence he delivers in his book, Why Just Her: The Judicial Lynching of the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, provides a clear picture that powerful men employed her services. And while you can’t form a conclusion against any one person or political group for Palfrey’s demise, you clearly see how the men who hired the women illegally were spared any criticism or penalty in the court of justice. Under duress and facing a lengthy time in jail, Palfrey took her own life on May 1st, 2008, calling her case a modern day lynching. Judge that however you wish.